Where Is God Just Now?

A kastousilia, according to Gurdjieff’s father, is a (seemingly) ordinary exchange between elders for the benefit of pupils. The following exchange took place between Gurdjieff's father and Father Borsh, Dean of Kars Academy, in Gurdjieff’s father’s workshop.  The story is from Chapter II in Meetings With Remarkable Men,written by Gurdjieff. Meetings  is well worth reading again and again – especially for those who may have forgotten the extraordinary nature and value of the relationship between elder/teacher and pupil in any serious study.
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Father Dean Borsh (as he walks into the workshop unexpectedly asks): Where is God just now?
Father: He is in heaven.
Father Dean Borsh: What is he doing there?
Father (answers most seriously): God is just now in Sari Kamish.
Father Dean Borsh: What is God doing there?
Father: God is making double ladders there and on the tops of them [is] fastening happiness so that individual people and all nations might ascend and descend.

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Many tend, over the years, to forget Meetings with Remarkable Men and the stories he tells  about his formative years and the extraordinary people he met during that time who had indelible influences on him. Too many people are content to watch the movie without revisiting the book in which the visual distractions of the actors, scenery and costumes are absent - leaving room for you. When you read the stories, there is just you, the story and God – and maybe Mr. Gurdjieff, off smiling somewhere seeing that perhaps he did not waste his breath.

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Gurdjieff's story reminds me of  Jacob's dream in the book of Genesis (28:11–19)

     Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it [or "beside him"] and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it." And he was afraid, and said, "This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."



Be Calm, Walk Steady In Peace, BE